The overall goal of this application is to provide urgently needed funds for equipment purchases and laboratory alterations and renovations to supplement a recently funded COBRE award for the development of a Cardiovascular Research Center at the UH. The newly funded COBRE Center has brought three nationally recognized established investigators together in a novel mentoring initiative to assist five promising young investigators in the development of a highly interactive, multidisciplinary research program focused on the biology and pathogenetics of the blood vessel wall. The funded COBRE award has been enthusiastically supported by all the participating institutions within the UH and this support has included allocations of space and funding for partial renovations of laboratory space, for a new microscopy and histology core laboratory and a common-use glassware and autoclave facility. This supplemental application is seeking additional funding to complete these renovations and purchase equipment for both common-use for all the COBRE participants and additional equipment for the new microscopy and histology core laboratory. These supplemental funds will assist in the rapid development of this COBRE Center and enhance the short-term goal of this Center in successfully securing new R0I and P0I funding for the participating investigators. Under the new and dynamic leadership of a new President of the UH and a new Dean for the UH Medical School (The John A Burns School of Medicine; the only Medical School in Hawaii), additional funds for infrastructure development for the new COBRE Center will also assist in realizing the long term goals of the University to revitalize life sciences research through complementation of a very recent commitment of $150 million by the State of Hawaii to create a new research-intensive campus for the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded health sciences-related research. This initiative has been established as a major priority by the State to assist in rapid economic diversification by encouraging the growth of biotechnology